Just a regular thirty-something-year-old trying to capture the essence of life in writing. Join me as I journey through the ups, the downs and the adventures in between.

A Post From My Heart (On Revisiting The Past)

Posted on May 13, 2015

Life is crazy sometimes, isn’t it? Have you ever thought about the past? Like, where you were then compared to where you are now?

We rested our feet atop a steel frame bridge overlooking a steady stream, its caged undernet catching figments of leaves and twigs as familiar waters passed through with great intention. Have you ever visited a place of your past where the surroundings appear the same, yet everything is somehow completely different? We leaped over mud-covered rocks to get here – here to the backyard of my childhood home. This place sat at the bottom of our old driveway, surrounded by woods, a solitary bridge overlooking a slow-flowing river. I wouldn’t even call it a “park,” for it lacks the swing sets, the roundabouts, or the wooden picnic benches. This place, this familiar place, was but a nostalgic nook in my home town.
In a strange, big world sense, the returning trajectory of the water mirrored by own return to this place. Just as the waters may have circled around to different streams and rivers and lakes and maybe back again, here I was doing the same thing. The flush of water brought a flush of memories; of jumping across river rocks as children; of slipping on moss-covered ones and falling hard into the cold water; of long walks with Grandma before she passed away; of how hard life was back then and how my brother and I used to wonder if it would ever change. I remembered standing right here as a child and dreaming. As I failed at skipping a rock or two, I wondered if I would succeed at something this small, and yet something as big as life itself. And twenty-something years later, on that same platform and on the brink of my 32nd birthday, I was listening to the humming of the water with the love of my life. I let it all soak in: not just the sun, but this moment, this day, this love that emanates from so many corners of my life. Another flush rolled in; the epiphany that all of my dreams had come true.

Life is crazy sometimes, isn’t it? Have you ever thought about the past? Like, where you were then compared to where you are now?

Brian smiled, “Well, where are you now?”

I raised my head to greet the warmth of the sun.

Happy.

Have you recently visited a familiar place of the past? What memories did that bring up?